Arc Search

The perfect AI browser companion?

Today we’ll be talking about Arc Search, a new browser for iOS from The Browser Company. For many years now, the internet browsing experience has largely remained the same. Something comes to mind that you want to know more about, you type it into your browser’s search bar, and then you sift through the jungle of links that Google or Microsoft present to you trying to extract the answer to your query. Sounds simple enough, but what if that process could be streamlined and the browser could do that work for you?

Introducing Arc Search- a new way to Internet

Arc Search is an iOS app that can work just like the browser you currently have installed on your phone. However, the real magic lies in a small little button that says “Browse for me”.

As an example I wanted to check in on how my favorite team is doing this season, the New York Knickerbockers. I started typing in my search and I could have hit “go” and it would’ve taken me to some Google results page. Selecting “browse for me” saves all the intermediate steps and intelligently reads the top web results and creates a custom web page all dedicated to the question I asked!

The web page that it generated contained a few highlights at the top with more detailed sub-sections as it continues. In my opinion, this is a glimpse into what the future of AI looks like, we no longer have to be the one to cherry pick information from various websites just to get the answers or information that we want. Arc Search does all that for you, and presents it to you in a very easy to digest format.

Okay, nifty trick.. but does it really save that much time?

You might be asking yourself, “Okay that’s great and all, but searching things doesn’t really take too much time” or “It’s a solution to a problem I wasn’t already experiencing.” Arc Search is an example of what good AI can do and how it can affect our everyday lives as the technology matures. Without a doubt companies like Apple and Google are working feverishly to incorporate features like this into their smart assistants. Companies like Humane and Rabbit have launched their AI-enabled devices that promise to transform how we interact with the world around us. Arc Search hits the right notes in the moment though because it doesn’t try to add complexity to our lives with new products or things we need to learn, it just takes unnecessary steps out of the equation and gets you where you’re trying to go faster.

Ads

There’s more to bypassing the Google search results page than meets the eye. Google or more specifically their parent company Alphabet really, really, really wants you to keep seeing the results that are curated for you. They have good reason for that too, they made a whopping $48 billion just from Google search result ads in the fourth quarter of 2023. That is just a mind-blowing number all coming from the seemingly innocuous ads that appear as either sponsored links or products that are recommended to you.

On top of that, websites know that the best way to get you to their site is by appearing higher in that results list that Google generates. They game this system through something called SEO or Search Engine Optimization where websites will include a bunch of bloat in their page just to make sure that all different kinds of keywords are included.

Another great example of bloat, but not quite related to ads, are recipes. If you’ve ever looked for a recipe online you’ll know there are some great ones out there, but only if you can actually find the recipe somewhere on that page. Here’s an example of a dinner I made recently, chicken piccata. First, is a pretty standard recipe website.

See all that scrolling? Yeah, hard to keep track of quantities and instructions when I have to jump so far to find the information I need. Here’s what Arc Search produces in comparison…

Well, that’s certainly cleaner! The only way to make the cooking process easier would be to have the recipe floating right over the stove… more on that in another post 😉🥽.

Thanks for reading! Until next time…

-MOD

If you’re reading this on your iPhone now, here’s a link to the aforementioned Arc Search.